Heather Curl

Heather Curl leads the year-long senior capstone experience for students completing teacher certification: Education 301 (Curriculum and Pedagogy) and Education 302 (Practice Teaching Seminar) at Bryn Mawr. In addition, she is one of the instructors for the introductory course, Education 200 (Critical Issues in Education) for both the fall and spring semesters. This year, she will also be teaching Education 266: Schools in American Cities and Education 311 (the culminating education seminar for the education minor). Heather has taught English and social studies in a number of K-12 educational institutions. While earning her doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, she served as a mentor for first year Teach for America teachers and acted as the research assistant to the director of an Executive Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership. In addition, she has prepared Bryn Mawr and Haverford students interested in pursuing careers in education to teach in a non-profit summer program for high school students from Philadelphia. She has also been involved with Breakthrough Collaborative in Philadelphia as a teacher coach, and was a student and teacher in the program when it was called Summerbridge in Portland, OR and Los Angeles.

Her primary research interests include social mobility, cultural capital and knowledge, social class and stratification. She is also interested in youth culture, particularly when it is used as a curricular tool for student engagement, and has travelled abroad to Nigeria, Zambia, Nicaragua and Haiti to pursue her interests in teacher development in an international context. She also serves as the Teaching and Curriculum Specialist for Impact Network, a nonprofit organization that builds community schools and supports sustainable teaching in rural Zambia. She recently received the AERA Education Research Service Project Grant to conduct teacher education research in Zambia this winter.

Heather holds a M.S.Ed. and Ed.D. in Teaching, Learning and Curriculum from The University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in History along with Pennsylvania Teacher Certification in English and Social Studies from Haverford College.